Gift Guides

Most readers of this blog have people on their gift list who love traveling with gadgets. Okay, most readers of this blog are people who love traveling with gadgets.

Yet hardly anyone has all five (or even one) of the cool gift suggestions reviewed below, gifts designed to help tech-loving travelers watch, hear, power and organize their gadgetry better. Our selections each range from $9 to $299 and come with a WOW factor!

Travel is one of the best gifts an adult can bestow upon a child. Unfortunately, as gifts go, travel is expensive. And time consuming. And involves potentially painful car and/or plane trips. Which is why travel-themed games are so great — they can introduce kids to an aspect of travel in as little as 30 minutes, without leaving the house, packing a bag or applying for a passport. Games can help also prepare kids for real-life trips by providing knowledge and building excitement.

Time was that products and materials were either recycled or not. These days, “upcycled” products are becoming increasingly popular. The difference between “upcycling” and “recycling” being that the former involves reusing a material without degrading its quality or composition. So, used beer bottles being turned into jeans or asphalt or new beer bottles are examples of recycling (because the old beer bottles are melted down into cullet before being reused). But used beer bottles being turned into, say, a Thai temple is an example of upcycling.

In the increasingly diverse (and, some would say, nutty) language around eco-friendly concepts, other terms for reusing material emerged. One can not only recycle or upcycle but also downcycle, freecycle, precycle and e-cycle. But there’s only one other -cycle we’re concerned with for this post: Hipcycle.

Users of Apple iPads and iPhones downloaded more than 5 million mobile applications from the iTunes app store last month. About that many apps were downloaded by users of Android tablets and smartphones. A million or so more went to Blackberries and devices running other operating systems.

Among the people who were struck by the high—and fast increasing—popularity of mobile apps: toy makers. Increasingly, toys are either designed to be used with an app or are inspired by them. Here’s our review of five especially cool ones:

People who love photography tend to really love photography. They also tend to already have all the cameras, lenses and bags they need (or can afford). So here are 8 relatively inexpensive gifts that the photographer on your gift list is likely to appreciate and not already have. Of course, you should feel free to give any (or all?) these to yourself too.

Here’s a challenge: Find a gift for a frequent traveler that’s very light weight and easy to pack. Make it something cool and creative. Only pick items that your gift recipient is extremely unlikely to already own. And, oh yeah, your gift can’t cost more than US$10.

Spot Cool Stuff recently went shopping with those exact criteria in mind. Here’s our review of five cool travel-related gifts we found that meet those criteria. Each makes for a great stocking stuffer. But there’s no rule saying you can’t shop for yourself too.

The iPhone 4S is the best selling smart phone of all time. Chances are high that at least one person on your gift list is an enthusiast of Apple’s multi-purpose device. But how to find a gift that taps into that enthusiasm? Here’s our choice of eight creative iPhone-related ideas:

With sufficient LEGO pieces and a healthy imagination you can build pretend versions of anything. The popular line of plastic building blocks have also inspired the design of many real products. Here’s a look at 12 of them:

You don’t need to be an architect to love cool architecture. Urban planning and building design is an interdisciplinary passion, attracting the likes of art enthusiasts, engineers, history buffs, designers and travelers. Chances are that at least one person on your gift shopping is among those.